Pats Pulpit
The Patriots selected Maye in the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft on Thursday night
The New England Patriots have started off their 2024 NFL Draft campaign with a bang.
Not only did they not trade out of the first round for a pick they’ll later use on a second-round DB, they selected the player most pundits pegged as the best fit for them in Drake Maye.
The 21-year-old North Carolina product is 6-foot-4, 230 pounds of awesome, and if history is any indicator, he’s a mortal lock for the Hall of Fame. As we all know, if a quarterback gets drafted high, his success in the NFL is completely guaranteed.
Don’t believe me? Name a single QB drafted Top 3, in the entire history of the NFL Draft, that hasn’t worked out. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
I’m on record several times expressing my ignorance of college football. I watch it casually and enjoy it, but I’m not in the weeds with it the way I am with the NFL. My draft prep is perfunctory at best, and I prefer to leave the analysis to the more qualified folks out there. So, I’m approaching the Maye pick from the perspective of a regular fan as opposed to the wannabe sportswriter I pose as for the rest of the year. And in case there are people out there who, the second Maye’s name was announced, couldn’t help but think, “man...I wonder what Alec Shane thinks about that pick?”, not to worry. I’m here to satisfy your curiosity.
Here’s everything that went through my mind once the pick was in.
He’s got all the pieces. It’s tough to watch Maye’s game tape and dislike what you see. The kid has a cannon for an arm. He’s a big guy, He’s athletic. He’s mobile., He can work the middle of the field and has a great deep ball. He can throw on the run and extend the play. He was the second best QB of his class on many draft boards and rightly so. He’s got some holes in his game for sure and isn’t the most polished player in the draft, but it’s hard not to see why the kid went so high. When there’s a college quarterback of Maye’s caliber available, you’d be foolish not to give him a shot.
The whole draft is a gamble. Nobody has a goddam clue what they’re talking about when it comes to the draft. Nobody knows who will work and who won’t, so you just have to take your shot and hope for the best. The real downside of drafting a QB high in the first round is that odds are you won’t be drafting a QB in the first round anytime soon; Maye is most likely our guy until 2027 come hell or high water.
That means that if he doesn’t work out, it’s back to another rebuild in a few years. But that’s a crap attitude to have, to be honest....
